This past month I’ve been talking about emotions much more which has resulted in unprecedented unsubscribe rates. It’s also been a time of the greatest positive responses to my business with thank you emails and gratitude messages.

This is how business works – if you take a stand, risk vulnerability and rejection to share what’s really important to you, share what you really believe… you WILL be rejected.

But those who stay are YOURS.

Sales and rejection are a part of being a selling artist. It’s a natural part of owning and running your own art business.

While talking about sales people and the rejection they go through daily, Malcolm brings up “explanatory style”, and that the greatest predictor of success is how we interpret failure.

The nugget of this can be broken down into 3 questions about the failure or rejection:

1. Is it your fault or someone else’s?
2. Is it a judgement of your Self as a whole or just one small facet?
3. Is it something you globalize or is it particular?

1. Who’s fault is it?

Do you accept rejection/failure as your own fault or do you blame others or circumstances or bad luck?

Owning our failures and rejections fully means that we can fix them, that it’s totally within our power to do something about it and get a different result.

2. What does it say about you?

Does the rejection mean that you are fundamentally not suited to this work? Does it mean that you are incapable? Or does the failure or rejection mean that there is part of the process that didn’t work, but can be tweaked and changed?

Viewing the rejection as a problem with the process rather than an intrinsic personal failure allows us to examine our sales path, make changes and try again.

A problem with one small part means that it’s fixable and not some sort of statement about our unworthiness as a person.

3. What does it say about your future?

Is today’s failure indicative of today’s particular circumstances or is it an example of future results in any location? Globalizing our failure today sets our performance in stone as a statement of unchanging fact.

By viewing failure and rejection as a particular occurrence – a result of a specific and limited set of circumstances, we are free to try again and get a different result.

There is a very strong “athleticism” attitude underlying a successful response to failure and rejection.

Fundamentally, the idea is that there will be many, many chances to try again… unlimited chances. Infinity chances.

Past performance has no bearing on what can be accomplished tomorrow – and anyways, it’s all up to us and our willingness to improve.